When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer. OurPrivacy Noticeexplains more about how we use your data, and your rights. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Peter Hay said it was a “tragedy” that “many” of the issues in Dr Jill Jesson’s 1991 investigation were not “developed”.

His comments came just four months after he defended the council from claims the former Aston University lecturer’s report – commissioned by the authority – was “buried”.

Mr Hay, its strategic director for people, told the Mail last November: “This is a matter which was discussed in full and in public over 20 years ago.”

In a new report to the council’s education and vulnerable children scrutiny committee, he repeated his belief there had been no cover-up – but admitted Dr Jesson’s research would have been potentially “ground-breaking”.

He said: “The tragedy is many of the issues in the report were then not developed – it shows the attitude of male staff in particular towards the young girls; it highlights the involvement of taxi drivers; it has a good grasp of the number involved.

“The council’s decision to commission the research was not then translated into similar bold actions to follow through on the messages coming from the work, and from the voice of young people who were being abused.”

Dr Jesson was asked by the authority to look at the issue of child prostitution involving girls in care back in 1990.

The following year, after six months research, she produced a critical two-part report which showed child protection failings by social workers and other agencies.

Her report also highlighted claims that some Asian private hire drivers were linked to the sexual exploitation of young white girls in care, including some who had been cautioned for prostitution offences.

Yet when Dr Jesson presented her draft findings to a steering group, she said she was ordered to remove all reference linking ethnicity and the private hire trade.

Incredibly, her full amended final report was never published.

A meeting planned to discuss it was cancelled – and all copies were to be destroyed.

“I was employed to do the work because I think they thought I would be objective,” Dr Jesson told the Mail.

“I was told to reveal what I saw.

“I did – and some people didn’t like it.

“There was a link between the sexual abuse of the girls and private hire drivers in the city.

“I thought at the time I did the work that there was an issue with race.

“Most of the girls were white.

“I was asked to take this link out, to erase it.”

Mr Hay confirmed last year that Dr Jesson’s report was NOT published in 1991 “for reasons which are not clear”.

He claimed it was published in full in December 1995 – a claim dismissed by the Mail when we reported last year that just one part of the two-part original report was discussed, and the full report was never published.

In his new report to the education and vulnerable children committee, Mr Hay conceded: “A huge opportunity to improve the safety of children in care and to build a pioneering response to the sexual exploitation of children in care was missed.

“The lesson is to not allow the issues to get lost, however uncomfortable the debate.

“I am sure the current scrutiny committee will share that resolve.”

Mr Hay also revealed that social services were “not robust” in following up the “psychological needs” of the young women highlighted in Dr Jesson’s report.

He said six returned to care with sexually transmitted diseases, four became pregnant and three were physically abused – with one suffering burns and another reportedly thrown out of a moving car.

“This is compounded by the different standards of the time – for example the perception of this as ‘prostitution’ not ‘child sexual exploitation’,” he added.

“It is clear the report is thorough in the application of research,” he adds.

“By the standards of the time, it was probably ground-breaking.”

Mr Hay’s new comments emerged as another report revealed that 488 children in Birmingham and the West Midlands were identified as victims of sexual exploitation in just six months from January to June last year.

The chilling figure was more than double the previous estimate for the same period, indicating the scale of the problem was previously vastly underestimated.

For the first time, police and council officials publicly admitted a ‘disproportionate number’ of Asian Pakistani men were involved in on-street grooming, as revealed by the Mail last year.